Every so often we publish here at OSNews articles about copyright, about the war of the "old media" establishment against everyone else. Many, myself included, have argued that the way to get out of this mess -- short of changing the law -- is to have more artists release their work under a Creative Commons license. However, after a few years it became obvious to me that CC would never be able to change the industry all by itself. Offering a Free license, and having 30,000 albums released under it, was still not enough. Until the Summer of 2009, that is. Update: Added audio samples.

Cory Doctorow sells books that are also available free via a CC license, but people buy the books anyway. Maybe he's too famous now to count, but I think he's always given his stories away but sold the bound versions, so there's an example of a novelist who managed to make it work.

Unfortunately, I think you also have to be a prominent blogger and really promote your books and engender goodwill and a personal connection with the potential readership. Doctorow feels pretty strongly that if all else were the same and he didn't CC his stories, he wouldn't be more successful or rich than he is now, because the main enemy of any writer, just like musician, isn't being ripped off by filesharers, but being ignored by everybody.